For Dinner: Sweet and Sour soup, Steak
strips with green peppers intermixed with baby corn.
Mood: Beauty in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps...
Written in the Year of our Lord 3580, March 26nd,
Tuesday night.Location: The Fel arcology on the city Vagnar on the continent of Laufey,
near the Ran ocean, on Loki.

Glutheim took me to a work of art. Sort of.
Kind of. Perhaps.

"What is it? A painting?"

"No."

"Photography?"

"No. It's a work-of-art-in-action. "

"Like a movie?"

"In a sense. But this is live."

"A play? I've already seen one play, and quite
frankly I'm not eager to see another...."

So we were crammed into a concert hall. Interesting,
there were transparent barriers between the audience and the stage, which
were loaded with all sorts of materials. I was used to being
stared at where I went, but I saw Derheim and Nirut and several other Lokiites
I recognized....and their large entourage of bodyguards. It seemed to be
a pretty widely-regarded artistic event.

A person in protective clothing at mask, like someone
working with dangerous materials came out. She made an oddly humanlike
bow, and then set off a small acetylene torch. She lit one end of a large
fuse, and then very quickly shut off the torch and got out of there, until
she too was outside the protective glass.

Then the flames flared up. Multicolored flames, consuming
one object after another. Special powders of different elements were set
up in different places, making the flames blaze in different colors. The
larger structures on stage were taking longer to burn...as if flammable
but just barely.

I looked around. No one was panicked, everyone
was rapt. I have seen that look on people gazing on a beauty of the
opposite sex, or a wonderful painting or sculpture. Then I realized what
the attraction was. I remember a pyromaniac I once had in confession, how
he would talk about the beauty of flames growing and leaping, of the wonderful
spectacle the destruction made.

So it was with them. I could see them getting
into it. They were fascinated by the flames, as much as any pyromaniac
would be...but instead found an acceptable, safe outlet for it. They had
made pyromania into an art form.

I noticed cameras were capturing this. It woudl
be a fleeting art form, so if you had to see it again, you would have to
record it. Rather like a musical concert. But here the joy was not in creation...but
in destruction. I muttered, "It figures."

Even I...not afflicted with pyromania that
I know of...admitted that the ways the colors danced in the flames made
quite a beautiful effect. The crisping and destruction of the structures
did give temporary beauty, as a burning piece of paper twists and makes
its own strange beauty as it's being destroyed....

After the performance,although all were visibly
moved, there was no applause, no salute to the author. Glutheim asked,
"How did you like it?"

"Interesting. Who pays the artist for
the work?"

"In her case, the Haki hierarchy, which sponsored
this work of art. Of course, once filmed, such works of art are marketable
commodities."

A world where pyromania is a legitimate artform.
I couldn't help it. I laughed, long and loud, startling Glutheim.

Then a more sobering thought intruded. I thought
about the Witch Burnings. "Do you ever burn people--criminals or
anything like that?"

"Of course not."

I was pleasantly surprised, thinking they might be
less sadistic than I thought....then Glutheim followed it up with an observation
that shattered that thought....

"They struggle and flail around too
much. It ruins the beauty of the moment."